Clemson’s national title chase delights fans from 1 to 97

For half a century now, the McCallums have had reserved seats at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium.

Phoebe McCallum has kept her season tickets for the same two seats since the 1964 football season, long after her children moved out of state, her husband Harold “Mac” McCallum passed away, and age prevented her from going to the games herself.

Even at the age of 97, McCallum renews the tickets every year and hands them over to her visiting children, friends or any of her neighbors and staff at Rock Hill’s Park Pointe Village retirement community – even to Gamecock fans, if she must.

You can tell McCallum is excited about the Tigers making the college football playoffs. If Clemson beats Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Eve, the team has a shot at winning its first national championship since 1981.

McCallum’s room in the skilled care section of Park Pointe is decked out in orange, from the blanket on her bed to the knitting draped over the flat screen TV where she watches the Tigers play. Even McCallum herself sits ensconced in her wheelchair in Clemson apparel from head to toe.

“It’s like this year ’round,” McCallum says with a laugh. “If I go anywhere, people ask me, ‘Where’s your orange?’”

McCallum isn’t the only Tigers fan excited about Clemson’s hunt for the national title. Several were making their way down to Miami for the big game, including McCallum’s son Hugh, who headed south after he came from California to visit his mother over the holidays.

“I try to get back for at least one game every year,” said Hugh McCallum, a 1974 graduate who was introduced to Clemson going to games with his parents.

Chester attorney Mike Lifsey packed up the car with his kids, the eldest a Clemson freshman, for a trip down Interstate 95 for his first bowl game since his college days.

“I used to go all the time,” he said. “When you get married and have kids, it’s harder to go ... but this is a special occasion.”

Chad Williams, a Clemson grad who runs the Rock Hill landscaping company CMS, makes a point of driving his 1978 Clemson-orange Cadillac convertible back and forth to Death Valley during the season, although for the drive down to Miami, he chose a regular SUV.

“It could have made it though,” Williams said of the car, which he’s owned since his graduation in 1988. “It’s factory orange. It was specially ordered from the factory orange. After it sat out for five years and got faded, that’s the only time it’s been painted.”

Williams’ daughters went home to California before the Orange Bowl, but if the Tigers make it to the national championship game, he and his wife, Malynda, plan to meet up with them in Arizona for the game.

McCallum wishes she could go to the Orange Bowl. It’s been years since she went to a game herself. A long-time teacher at Fort Mill High School, she didn’t go to Clemson. But she and her husband, an ag teacher who finished his career as a principal at Fort Mill Middle School, used to go to games every year when their children were younger.

“I started out going with the guys,” she said. “We tailgated. It was a lot of fun.”

Even then, she was making an impression on Tigers fans. Hugh McCallum said his mom still gets Christmas cards from some of the guys they used to go to games with when he was in college.

Over the years, she probably logged among the highest number of miles of any Tigers fan – many of them on a 1982 flight to Japan the family took to watch a special promotional game between Clemson and Wake Forest played in Tokyo.

In all the time before and after she moved to Park Pointe, she’s advanced from wife and mom who goes to the game to Clemson fanatic. Around the retirement community, she’s become known for dressing in all black the day after a Clemson loss.

McCallum didn’t do that this season. The Tigers won every game. Instead, she started a new ritual; she painted her fingertails orange for the opening game against Wofford, and changed one nail to purple for each Clemson win.

“Now they’re painting my toenails,” she says proudly.

“On game day she’s in the (shared living) pod with her pompoms, and soon she has the whole pod cheering,” said nursing assistant Kathy Nichols. “Whether you’re a Clemson fan or not, she’s won them over to Clemson.”

But watching a high-stakes college football game can be stressful for a nonagenarian fan who’s been paying IPTAY, Clemson’s athletic booster organization, for 51 years. “A couple times they about gave me a heart attack,” she said.

McCallum has lived at Park Pointe for 16 years, moving from the villas to an apartment to an assisted-living environment. Her husband, Mac, passed away in 2008.

But even though she can’t see the games in person anymore, when the Tigers take the field on New Year’s Eve, they’re sure to have vocal support in the Orange Bowl stands, and an even more enthusiastic supporter in the “Hummingbird” wing of the skilled care center.

This story was originally published December 31, 2015 at 7:53 AM with the headline "Clemson’s national title chase delights fans from 1 to 97."